Maurice then installed himself in the arbour, took off his belt that he might be more at his ease, and selected a table on which the sunrays, filtering through the vine leaves, were casting golden spots. His eyes kept on returning to that high yellow wall which screened the Emperor from view. The house was indeed a hidden and mysterious one; not even the tiles of the roof could be seen. The entrance was on the other side, facing the village street--a narrow street, where neither shop nor even window was to be seen, for it wound along between monotonous blank walls. The grounds in the rear of the house looked like an ait of dense verdure amid the neighbouring buildings. Among these, on the other side of the highway, Maurice noticed a large courtyard surrounded by stables and coach-houses, and filled with vans and carriages, amid which men and horses were continually coming and going. 'And are all those traps for the Emperor?' Maurice jokingly asked the servant, as she spread a clean white cloth on his table. 'Yes, for the Emperor and no one else,' she answered, with a gay sprightly air, pleased to have an opportunity of showing her fresh white teeth. Then she began to enumerate all there was; having learnt this, no doubt, from the grooms who had been coming to drink at the tavern since the day before. To begin with, there was the staff of twenty-five officers, the sixty Cent-Gardes, the escort-detachment of Guides,[15] the six Gendarmes of the provostship service; then the household, comprising seventy-three persons, chamberlains, valets and footmen, cooks and scullions; next four saddle-horses and two carriages for the Emperor, ten horses for the equerries, and eight for the outriders and grooms, without counting forty-seven posting horses; then a _char à bancs_ and twelve baggage vans, two of which, reserved to the cooks, had excited the girl's admiration by the large quantity of kitchen utensils, plates, and bottles that could be seen inside them, all in beautiful order. 'Ah! sir,' she said to Maurice, 'I never saw such saucepans before! They shine like the sun! And there are all sorts of dishes and vessels, and things I can't even tell the use of! And wine, too--bordeaux, and burgundy, and champagne enough to give a splendid wedding feast.'